1. Safe Encryption, Strong Protocols

For Mac users, ZenMate uses IPSec and IKEv2 protocols. This is a stable and secure protocol that performs well. It’s one of the fastest protocols out there and it’s super easy to set up, so, awesome.

It does have limited platform support, though, and may be vulnerable to firewalls.

Windows users have access to IPSec and IKEv2 as well, with the added option of L2TP/IPSec.

ZenMate Ultimate, their premium plan, is compatible with OpenVPN software. Through this system, users can “upgrade” ZenMate’s service to the infinitely preferable OpenVPN tunneling protocol. OpenVPN open sourced system is maintained by the entire cybersecurity community and is widely considered the industry standard for safety.

For encryption, ZenMate’s protocols support AES, which is used by fortune 500 companies and the federal government alike. It’s powerful and secure.

4. Sizable Server Park and Kill Switch

According to the main page of their website, they have 298 servers located within 31 different countries. That’s pretty impressive, considering a year ago they barely had 40.

They’re big into the bypassing of censorship, which is especially helpful if you’re using their service in a country that restricts internet use.

They allow five connections per account, which is pretty similar to most VPNs we’ve reviewed.

One of my favorite ZenMate features is its built-in kill switch. This is an added layer of protection that will abruptly end your session if your signal becomes unsecured. This has become a common feature of most of the best VPNs that we review.

5. Unlimited P2P Torrenting

ZenMate used to get a lot of heat for not allowing torrenting on their servers.

Collecting information about my browser and operating system are not a violation of my privacy. It’s not identifying information, so I’m good with this.

Whoa.

Back up.

They’re logging my original IP address?

They make sure it’s anonymized and it is mentioned that all of it isn’t logged. However, it’s still collected which still raises a red flag.

It’s important to note that the company makes sure to stress that information is not stored once the VPN is enabled. But if you can be identified as someone who is using a VPN, it’s not truly anonymous service, even if your activity remains safe.

Out of six tests, ZenMate only failed one, but even one failure is enough to put a VPN’s safety into question.

https://ipleak.net/ – Failed

https://www.perfect-privacy.com/check-ip – Passed

https://ipx.ac/run – Passed

https://browserleaks.com/webrtc – Passed

https://www.perfect-privacy.com/dns-leaktest/ – Passed

https://dnsleak.com – Failed

That’s a major issue.

4. Buggy, Crashing, and Wouldn’t Start

I attempted to use ZenMate for Windows.

Please note the word “attempt.”

When I first clicked the download link on their website, I was shocked at how fast it loaded onto my laptop. It was downloaded and opened within 10 seconds.

Then, my astonishment turned to frustration very quickly.

That blank white screen was all I got. If I moved the mouse over where login fields should be I got a cursor, so this was clearly just an issue with the program.

I minimized the window and opened it back up.

The blank white screen turned into a blank black screen.

I stopped banging my head on my desk, took an ibuprofen, and reached out to their customer support department, receiving the following email the next day:

This was irritating as it is clearly a ‘copy and paste’ response. I had already sent them the two screenshots with my ticket submission, so it seems like my initial request for help was barely read.

If I were a consumer and not a reviewer, I would have uninstalled their program immediately and moved on with my life.

Instead, since I love my job, I answered their questions and sent them the screenshots for a second time.

Still no response.

5. Timely, But Vague Support Response

ZenMate uses a contact form for their customer support tickets. I was very impressed by how much their system has changed since I first tried to use it in early summer 2018.

First, you click on the support link at the top of the page.

Once you’ve arrived at the Support page, you’ll notice a small “Help” button in the lower right-hand corner.

After you’ve clicked on that, their customer support contact form pops up.

I asked about their torrenting services, and whether or not the TOR service works on their network. My request was sent through at around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 16, 2018.

I was dismayed to find that I received no automatic email confirming that my question was received. This is usually a good service as it gives a consumer peace of mind knowing that someone has received their query and will be in contact.

Instead, I was left scratching my head and wondering when or if I would receive any response.

I received a response less than 24 hours later, though I wasn’t thrilled with it at all.

This was a timely response, however, it doesn’t really answer my questions. I asked if their service allows TOR and torrenting. They answered questions related to torrenting service but they never directly addressed my initial query.

I know from my own research that they allow P2P services with their paid plan. I think that’s what Adam here is trying to tell me, but he doesn’t come out and say it.

Instead, they pushed their premium service on me without ever acknowledging the initial question.

While they’ve definitely stepped up their customer support game over the years, ZenMate still has a long way to go in this regard.

ZenMate VPN Costs, Plans, & Payment Options

There are three tiers to ZenMate besides the free option.

Like most free services, the free option is quite limited. You’ve got TLS encryption, their firewall services, browser extensions, and servers located in Germany, Hong Kong, the United States, and Romania.

But since the free service is limited only to the browser extensions, it’s a proxy and not a full VPN. It encrypts the data passing through the browser, but not through other services on your computer.

Otherwise, you gotta pay.

The Premium package comes with the full desktop VPN client for Windows or Mac, the fastest speeds, the use of almost 300 servers in 31 countries, Malware blocking, and tracking protection.

It is priced at $11.99 per month on a month to month basis, which is on par with what most VPNs are charging for no commitment. For a one year plan, you’re saving 67% and paying $3.99 per month. If you want to use it for two years year, the price drops down to an even better $2.05 per month.

The Ultimate Package includes everything you get with the premium, plus a streaming guarantee.

All paid plans come with a 30-day money back guarantee, which is great. I love to see companies standing behind the performance of their product.

As far as payment options go, you have a few choices.

You can use PayPal, credit card, Union Pay, or Qiwi Wallet. No cryptocurrency, unfortunately.

Do We Recommend ZenMate?

No, we do not.

Protocols and encryption are decent. I was happy to see their embrace of OpenVPN, effectively bringing the service to multiple platforms. Definitely a positive step in the right direction!

But…

The fact that it’s logging my original IP address and is located within the jurisdiction of a surveillance alliance makes me nervous.

The leaks we found were worrisome. If I’m using a device for security I need to know that it’s bulletproof.

My hands-on test was an utter disaster, and I couldn’t get the program to work. That solidified my recommendation.

Had the customer service team actually walked me through the issue I was having, I would have been more forgiving. But they clearly only skimmed my questions and offered the most basic non-personalized responses they could muster.

Out of the 78 VPNs we’ve reviewed, we rank ZenMate at number 64. It missed our bottom 10 by two slots.

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7 user reviews for ZenMate VPN

Terry W 4/10March 10, 2019

So Slow I had to remove it

I have been using the free version for a few days. Since I have no idea if it is doing what they claim, I can only tell you what I have witnessed first hand. Web sites load so slow. Some taking over 3 minutes! I was not able to stream on Netflix, though I could on youtube once I could get the site to download. There are no settings that you can change in the free version. Since I have never used a VPN I don't know if there should be on a free version, though I would have thought so. Before I decided to pay for anything I wanted to see if it would work well for me. Needless to say, I am removing it.

USA user

Edward 1/10January 1, 2019

Zen Support is Useless

I am an engineer & I use Zen [MAC] for contact to UK programs. I would prefer to pay the UK TV companies directly but that is not possible. Thus I use Zen..... Initially it was good and stable but now very very poor value for money. The technical support is less than poor: all I get is cut & paste statements letting me know why it does not work. It has not worked for me in over a month and the "technical support team" are working on the issue. Not good for the cost. Also the protection is poor. I have suggested that I call a human and talk through the issues, the response is; "technical support team" are working on the issue. Hopeless.

Roger 10/10December 29, 2018

Positive report on support

I am using ZenMate since a few years and quite satisfied. I am not a computer geek but ZenMate do its job for windows as well as for android. It’s very easy to use and it’s very reliable. I just renewed a 2 years ultimate subscription for a very attractive price. Due to some glitch I was unable to activate my subscription, open a ticket with support and the next day I received a nice mail telling me that my subscription was activated. So personally I rate the support 5 stars. Thanks to Bien Wong

Chris Hardaker 10/10August 22, 2018

Sorry about Windows

I am the V.P. of Product at ZenMate (ZenGuard is the parent company).

I am truly sorry that you had problems with the Windows client. We would love to work with you on trying to find the fault. Normally Windows, although problematic at times, works perfectly. Almost all of our Windows users are happy, but yes, we do have the occasional problem. We work hard on trying to clear every fault and our Windows development team will see if they can replicate this problem.

With regards to some of your comments.....

"Copy and Paste" - With over 40 million accounts in existence, you can imagine the number of times we are asked these questions. Therefore, yes, our support team has a batch of macros where they can add answers that are pre-written. If they had to write out the answers for every user, we would need to quadruple the team size and increase prices.

Yes, we do record your IP Address. However, this is not a risk for our customers. As with any business, we like to measure the performance of our website, and this includes our dashboard where most of the service control is. As such, we use standard tools like GA to monitor this. At no time is your IP Address attached to your user account, and as we do not record any usage information, the best we can say is "yes, this email address has an account. Yes, this IP Address did visit our site. No, I cannot tell you if that is the same person. No, I cannot tell you if they ever actually used our service."

With regards to Torrenting, our standard answer is the we do not condone copyright infringement. However, we also note that P2P networking is not illegal in most countries. Personally, Linux distribution via P2P is a legitimate use of the technology and they is how I get most of my distributions. As such, P2P systems do work through us, as long as you use the desktop client and not the browser client.

I hope that clears up those issues. If not, please feel free to email me and I would be happy to answer any further questions.

Kind regardsChris HardakerV.P. ProductZenMate

Bruno 7/10December 9, 2017

Free version gets the job done.

While using the free version of Zenmate, I can’t say it’s bad. It’s actually pretty decent, offering an easy to use interface with 4 different servers to use from. It helps with routing issues to different platforms, which is mainly why I use it. With that said, latency is often quite high while browsing, it being Zenmate’s biggest fault.

Laurie Richings 4/10November 14, 2017

A relative long term user but now disenchanted with Zenmate

I have used Zenmate for about four years on my MacBook Pro up to High Sierra version 10.13.1. Up to early November, I have been quite satisfied with the product and support and I have been happy to pay the annual subscription.

I now cannot use my computer using Opera, my normal browser, and in order to report my problems to Zenmate I have had to resort to using a Win 10 machine just to provide details and screenshots.

I have not been able to get a human to contact me on how to resolve my difficulties, just a series of Bot responses asking for more information.

In the past, if the problem was not getting resolved, Zenmate support would take over my machine and get to the bottom of the issue.

David 10/10October 27, 2017

Zenmate against government censure

When my country, the Netherlands, started censoring the Pirate Bay in an attempt to curb online piracy, I wasn’t quite the happy camper. I used the website quite often for products not marketed towards my country, and books no longer in print.

Thankfully Zenmate’s free browser plugin for Google Chrome was quickly found, and could conveniently route my internet traffic through the United States so I could still get my reading fix, and I’ve never had an issue with it.